Samsung might invest 10 billion dollars to manufacture 3nm chips in the United States.
As part of an agreement with the US government, TSMC is in the process of opening a semiconductor factory in the country, specifically in Arizona. Apple’s main supplier, for which it manufactures AX processors for phones and the recent M1 for personal computers, will start production on US soil in a few months, and now it seems that Samsung is considering taking a similar path.
At least that is what Bloomberg reports, where they assure that some of their internal sources in the South Korean firm openly talk about Samsung’s future plans to bring a factory to Austin (Texas) for the next generation of mobile processors. Currently, Samsung already produces chips with 5-nanometer technology in its factories and the next leap, the one that would take them to 3-nanometers, could be partially in the United States.
Factory in 2021, machinery in 2022, production in 2023
According to Bloomberg, internal Samsung sources claim that the company is considering bringing part of its production of 3-nanometer chips, whose technology is still under development, to a new processor factory established in the United States. The factory would be located in the city of Austin, in the state of Texas, and to carry out their plans they would invest around 10 billion dollars, about 8.21 billion euros.
The manufacturer is already in talks with the United States to carry out this investment and the construction of the plant, and work could begin this year 2021. A logical date since, according to Bloomberg’s sources, they would like to install the equipment in these plants by 2022 and start manufacturing processors with 3-nanometer technology there in 2023. We would be talking about two-year plans, therefore.
Samsung would like to manufacture processors as early as 2023
Some industry experts are already starting to openly comment on these (still unconfirmed) plans by Samsung to establish a plant in Texas, such as HMC Securities vice president Greg Roh, who has stated that “if Samsung wants to achieve its goal of becoming the leading chipmaker by 2030 it needs a massive investment in the United States and thus catch up with TSMC”.
In addition, Greg Roh has commented to Bloomberg that “TSMC is likely to continue to make progress in manufacturing 3-nanometer transistors at its Arizona plant and Samsung can do the same.”. Bloomberg tells Bloomberg that with the recent change of president in the United States, Samsung may need some time to resume negotiations with the new executive for this investment so close in time (2021). It seems, therefore, that everything is more advanced than it seems.
